I've been taking some interest in the FSF as it relates to Linux. In particular, I've watched a few video interviews of Richard Stallman. I think he's right on many points, such as the idea that we're being tracked, and the chance for inclusion of backdoors in many software products, and that you can never be sure what's happening under the hood of closed source/proprietary code. I'm convinced that he's doing what he feels is right, and isn't just tooting his own horn. But as well, he seems to be taking extreme measures against what I think he perceives as enemies, whether they are or not in actuality. He won't ride a train because he doesn't want to use a cashless system.

Is he right? Or has his ideology fallen into the realm of conspiracy theory?

I don't see the conspiracy: card-name, train?

We're all taught by only humans tho,,, so...

Richard Stallman is a trust-fund baby who really likes to see his name in the papers. The man that he most likes to listen to is himself.

@SlowCoder he's more approachable than you think ; i sent him and email with a question - a straight forward but courteous answer is what i got.

There was a hint of paranoia in his email which contained :

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

So if you think you have a sensible and considered question , for r.m.s you might ask him yourself

his email is : rms@gnu.org

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I'd have to admit to that myself. I made the mistake of going to some conference organised by the Irish Linux User's Group (Lego users have ilug.ie). He sat around all day being rude and interrupting speakers. I was thinking "who is that bad-mannered %$&@£#€&! and why don't they throw him out?" Then I discovered he was their keynote speaker, and anything but humble.

That said, we probably have OSS & GPL because of his GNU project insistence on freedom. That said, I have absolutely no time for poor personal conduct. So in summary, may we agree on describing him as a flawed diamond?

I asked him a question at a conference once and he gave a thoughtful, laser-focused answer direct to the point of my question. Same for the few e-mails I have had occasion to write to him about various Freedom+technology related topics. He answered each one, when his time permitted, with a thoughful, well-reasoned answer that showed he had read and understood each message. I have not had reason to write to him for a long time now, though a friend is in fairly regular correspondence with him.

His past and current contributions are indisputable. However, at his age we have to address the reality that his role must become that of advisor and mentor, not that of leader. The reason is that one day when he finally does leave us, it is important that by then the insitution(s) he founded are on steady, independent feet and can survive without him rather than drop into chaos or worse on his departure. Again, being able to survive without him is not the same as failing to take advantage of his skill, experience, and vision while we have him with us.

We don't want the FSF to drop its core values upon loss of its founder like what looks to have happened with the EFF.

I got another reply from RMS yesterday ; i asked advice about licensing since I've done a very light CMS as an alternative to WordPress written on top of CodeIgniter4 which has a MIT license.I wanted to know do I just leave CodeIgniter team license alone, edit it or add License2.txt to the web root ; again just a brief but courteous reply suggesting i submit it to fsf and see what they think

But regarding

When I visit a bank, supermarket or Post Office in the U.K I refuse to use one of those automated machines I refer to as "prototype terminators" . Most people probably don't think and use them. The reason I don't use them is that there is a trend to reduce human staff and increase the number of machines. I've watched it happen bit by bit ; then one Post office staff member, when I mentioned few staff and those "terminator" machines confided to me "we have been told not to talk about staff levels and machines. "

That response in itself tells you a lot and the ways things are going.


So not sure if thats RMS reason but he has a point, in that once there is a slippery slope and you don't object anyway you can ; often there is no going back

If you look at RMS objectively he has Autism , he has an ego and probably will never fit into some humble Mr Average shoes. By the way there are more than one or two who obviously have huge ego's on this site

What we don't need, we don't need.

Richard Stallman is right. The problem is that most people don't understand what he is talking about, or understand core societal issues in general. I like Stallman, but he can be a little bit repetitive and talk to everyone like they are a little child. He probably knows what he is doing, and I'm probably wrong for pointing that out, but I don't think it widens the discussion.

I think the way he speaks, tend to upset, ehm "sensitive individuals", and they most likely don't enjoy his rather crude behaviour. But then again, you could contribute that to them being so desperate lost in "the matrix" that they cannot let go of "artificially induced behaviours". What I mean by that is alot of people just do "like everyone else", even though it is stupid, self destructive (no independent personality) and destructive for society.

The "extreme measures" are not actually so extreme if you understand the scale of the problem. But yes, RMS does not use a normal web browser, he fetch requests websites and have them sent to his email or some such, then opens it as a static document on his computer. This might seem extreme, but it is rather the other end of how extreme the internet has turned out to be, and how desperately addictive it is to some. But you don't HAVE to take RMS precautions to avoid being a victime of the internet, there are other ways to do that as well.

The amount of and scale of problems that we face are far beyond what most people know about, but they are real, and clearly visible and available for anyone to figure out if they look into it (don't close their eyes to it). But most people don't want to know the truth and prefer to deny reality, because it is far more convenient.

RMS may be a quirky character who doesn't fit well in a "professional" setting - but more importantly he represents something that "Big Tech" wants to subvert for it's own profit. RMS and the GPL licenses have hampered them for decades.

Most articles I have read which are critical of Stallman have come from biased sources with close links to "Big Tech", particularly Microsoft.

GPL is great, and we're indebted to him for that whole ethos. The 'copyleft' idea is what has prevented companies buying out OSS itself just to shut it down.

Compare Bill Gates & Richard Stallman: In ~1980s Bill Gates made a lucky pitch for IBM's OS, became a billionaire, and the rest is history. Richard Stallman founded gnu.org with a vision of putting a free unix on the IBM PC. Say what you like about RMS (and believe me, I do!), I prefer his vision tio Bill Gates' one.

Btw, adding to that great statement, in this day with super rich software companies, most likely the only way you can protect ANY software project you care about is to make it decentralized free software (gpl).

Look at the buying habits of big tech and big companies and the, ehm, well supported "mysterious takedowns" of centralized (corporate) competition.

There's only two software in the world "law" and "freedom?"

Once we reach that so called "heard immunity" (from stupidity) we won't need law, will we?

https://www.fsf.org/faif

One of "vulnerabilities" of GPL is that you can't stop Big Tech from funding a project or employing all of the key developers. The project itself then morphs into something corporate - and there is the threat of firing or withdrawing funding.

The "forks", which we hear so much about from certain quarters, can't compete with the corporate funded projects, they lose developers and go dormant.

The upstream project then morphs into something much more "centralised", which sets out to deter forks, or even users just building it from source.

The corporate "open source" landscape is awash with such projects. I include gnome project, systemd, firefox and chromium as just a few examples.